The long-range goal of this proposal is to provide increased opportunities for faculty members and students at Norfolk State University (NSU) in the biomedical science and bioscience research area of the Public Health Services (PHS) mission through cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary research collaborations. These research collaborations will be pursued through the establishment of a Center for Biotechnology and Biomedical Sciences (CBBS). NSU recognizes that minority researchers are far more likely to study and investigate diseases that disproportionately affect minorities. Therefore, NSU, one of the largest historically black institutions of higher learning in the nation seeks to address this challenge by meeting the following objectives: (1) To increase the number of NSU faculty members submitting and acquiring competitive research grants from zero to five faculty members within a five year granting period; (2) To enhance the success of objective 1, NSU will hire three new, scientifically well-trained tenure-track faculty members whose research interests are in the biomedical sciences or closely related biosciences, with particular emphasis on attracting minority scientists; (3) To provide opportunities for NSU faculty members and students to exchange scientific ideas with leading biomedical scientists; and (4) To establish a state-of-the- art Bio-Analytical Core Facility to house research instrumentation and computers dedicated to the separation, isolation, characterization, and functional analysis of biomolecules. These objective will be accomplished by requesting funds for the following activities: (a) Support to omdemize and augment the research instrumentation and support services for our faculty and student researchers; (b) Support for the renovation of space to house the Bio-Analytical Core Facility; (c) Support for competitive research start-up packages for new hired faculty members associated with the Center; (d) Support for participating in grant writing workshops/seminars; (e) Support to establish research linkage partnerships with research-intensive Ph.D. granting institutions; and (f) Support to establish a "Distinguished Scholars Seminar Series" in the biomedical sciences and related biosciences. [unreadable] [unreadable]